December20

Week in Review

I survived. My first three days at SHS went off without a hitch. In those three days, I could already tell there was an enormous difference between SHS and VML (except the three letter acronym). Even though everyone runs around saying they're busy, SHS runs at a much slower pace than VML. That's ensuring to me, hopefully that means that I'll have plenty of time to do sites the right way... just like I always imagined.

The environment here is different, too. At VML, everyone has cubes, or some semblance of walls. Here at SHS, it's a very organic environment and the cubes here rock. All of the furniture here is Herman Miller (desks AND chairs)... can you say "boss"? Even the people here are a bit more open (when you hear gigantic burps and guitars playing in the afternoon, you know people are pretty comfortable around one another).

So, the new job is going well, in case any one was curious. My loft, on the other hand, not so good.

As I have alluded to in the past couple of weeks, I'm becoming more annoyed with my apartment each day. The two main contributing factors to this are my upstairs neighbor and my landlords.

The walls at Old Townley are already thin enough – this was proven to my by a previous neighbor who talked on the phone non-stop. No, scratch that, it sounded like she yelled on the phone non-stop, big difference.

As if the walls weren't enough, the floor in my part of the building is paper thin as well. See, Old Townley was built in three sections (you can see this as you walk through the building). The first (the oldest) was built using concrete flooring, the second was built using wood beams and steel piping, and the third was built using wood beams (NOTE: I COULD have that all backwards, in terms of age).

I live in the second section, wood beams... and wood floors... that are covered with industrial carpet (yeah, the super thin carpet that doesn't even really exist). So, the upstairs neighbors, whenever he/she walks around, I hear it. When they use the restroom, I hear it. When they almost kill themselves falling over in a drunken stupor, I hear it. And... when they turn on the dishwasher at midnight, I hear it.

The fact that I hear their every move isn't too big of a deal, I feel like I'm living on the lower level of a two-story house. To make matters worse, there's a drip in the walls. You can hear the drip whenever either of us use the hot water in the kitchen or they take a shower.

It's not JUST a drip. I think of it more as torture. You can hear it everywhere in my place, it echoes. No matter if I have the television on, music playing, the heater running, etc... you can hear it.

If you had a drip inside your apartment, who would you tell (besides your friends)? Your landlords. I've told them four different times about a leak/drip. One time the maintenance guy came, heard the drip, said he was going to check upstairs, and I never heard a thing again. So, I kept asking for it to be fixed. The response I finally got...

Oh, that's not a drip. That's how the water drains. If you don't want to hear that anymore, we suggest you move to the fifth floor.

WHAT!?! What kind of management is that? Who ARE these people? Just move and don't worry about it? What about the people who move in after that? Hu-uh, no way. I just found out that my lease is up in January, I'm gone.

And those pesky upstairs neighbors I mentioned... Yesterday they decided to have their HUGE break-up fight. It's bad enough that the walls/floors are thin and people elect to have a huge yelling match. It's worse when the gal is screaming "get off of me, let me go" over and over. I called the cops. What else am I to do in that situation?

I've got to get out of this place. Ugh.

+ original post date: December 20, 2004 08:52 AM
+ categories: Dwellings, General